Mitzi Cunliffe

The sculptor Mitzi Cunliffe, who has died aged 88, is best known for having designed the golden theatrical mask awards that have been handed out to stars of film and television by Bafta, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and its predecessors for more than half a century. But she also worked with a wide variety of materials on a scale ranging from jewellery to the decoration of big buildings with what she cheerfully referred to as "sculpture by the yard".

Born Mitzi Solomon in New York, she was educated at the city's Art Students League (1930-33) and Columbia University, where she received a BSc in 1939 and an MA in 1940. After the second world war she spent a year at the Academy Colarossi in Paris; seeing the sculpture of the celebrated west front of Chartres Cathedral determined her her future career. In her youth Mitzi produced romantic and beautiful free-standing figures in marble, stone, wood and bronze. Her work was admired by Le Corbusier, and she had exhibitions in New York and other American cities, culminating with the award of the Widener gold medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1949 she married the English academic Marcus Cunliffe, and they moved to Manchester, where he lectured in American studies at the university. They had a son and two daughters, though the marriage was dissolved in 1971.

The 1950s and 60s were decades of remarkable creativity for Mitzi, bringing her widespread public recognition and regular appearances on radio and television. She was one of the official sculptors for the Festival of Britain in 1951, with a piece at the site entrance, Root Bodied Forth, showing intertwined figures emerging from a tree, and the acclaimed bronze door handles for the Regatta restaurant, which had been commissioned by Misha Black, director of the Design Research Unit. There were also special textiles and other products to mark the coronation in 1953.

It was in 1955 that the Guild of Television Producers asked Mitzi to create a sculptured piece for a new award. The guild merged with the British Film Academy in 1958 to form the Society of Film and Television Arts, becoming Bafta in 1976, and its distintive trophy has become one of the most coveted awards in the world of film and television. In 1992 Bafta presented Mitzi herself with a special award for her contribution to the profile of the two industries.

Mitzi's design work extended to mass-produced textiles for David Whitehead and Tootal Broadhurst; pottery, ceramics and tiles for Pilkington; and jewellery for a range of clients - some of which was selected for the first international jewellery exhibition organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Between 1967 and 1971, examples of her work toured 20 British and and European cities. But it was her monumental-scale sculpture that attracted commissions and media attention.

In 1957, Mitzi designed the largest pierced bronze screen in the world - depicting the Wars of the Roses - for the restaurant in Lewis's department store in Liverpool. When the shop closed in the 1980s, she acquired the screen, one of her favourite works, and had it shipped and re-erected in the grounds of her home in the south of France.

Some 20 sculptures appeared in towns and cities all over England. A large relief at the pumping station at Heaton Park, Manchester (1955), ultimately led to the structure becoming the only post-1945 building in Britain to be listed for its sculpture as "a complete work of art" in 1998. She continued sculpting for large buildings throughout the 1960s, and her final large-scale architectural commission consisted of four carved stone panels for the Scottish Life House at Poultry, London, in 1970.

Arthritis and retinal surgery finally compelled Mitzi to abandon sculpting in the early 1970s, and she turned her formidable energies to teaching and writing at Thames Polytechnic (now South Bank University) from 1971 to 1976, and thereafter in North America,at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York; the University of Pennsylvania; and Concordia University, Montreal. She also wrote more than 50 articles for magazines and journals on both sides of the Atlantic.

Over the course of six years, I welcomed Mitzi to Bafta events in London, Cannes and the US. With her striking dresses, exquisite jewellery and dramatic personality, she engaged with everyone around her. Her final years were spent in Oxford, under the shadow of Alzheimer's disease; but she was deeply touched by the establishment of a sculpture travel prize in her name at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford University, in 1994. Her children survive her.

· Mitzi Cunliffe, sculptor, born January 1 1918; died December 30 2006